Tag Archives: DC Council

ALSO: How to Show Your Support

In the last couple of months you’ve heard a lot from me about the DC Promise Establishment Act. Most of it has related to making sure that homeschoolers were not unjustifiably excluded from the program simply because we had chosen to educate at home during the middle and secondary school years. That is a fairly uncontroversial stance in the homeschool world. Most homeschool organizations support equal treatment for homeschoolers in government spending, especially at the college level.

However, now I’m asking you to consider a slightly more controversial position. I think that District homeschoolers should actively support the amended DC Promise Act. As we all know, the District is not a state. That fact, and the reality that we only encompass 70 square miles, means that we cannot maintain a high quality public university system. Instead, students tend to leave the District and often establish residency somewhere else in order to eventually get in-state tuition benefits elsewhere. District students pay a much higher out-of-state tuition rate, at least for their first years at a public college. In the end they are less likely to return home because they have established residency elsewhere.

The Promise Act works to combat those problems faced uniquely by District students. The Act would provide enough assistance to District students so that they will be able to afford out-of-state public schools at something like the in-state tuition rates. In addition, the Promise Act would broaden the options for District students by allowing them to consider private schools rather than just the public ones. The Promise Act would put District students on an equal footing with other students in our region when it comes to being able to afford an excellent college education.

Is the program costly? Yes. It will likely cost between $50-100 million dollars. However, DC currently spends $2.3 billion on education. Spending an additional 3-5% to make sure that our students finish well seems reasonable. Does the program threaten DC-TAG? Hopefully not. DC-TAG provides federal money to District students to help with the cost of attending an out-of-state public college. DC-TAG was great when it started 13 years ago and provided $10,000 to help pay tuition at an out-of-state school. The problem is that it is still providing that same $10,000 while the cost to attend those schools as an out-of-state student has more than doubled. We need something more than the DC-TAG program. Hopefully Congress will not cut the program just because we have tried to step up to fill a gap that they have ignored.

If You Agree, Please Show Your Support!

The future of the DC Promise Act is precarious. It has the public support of all of the members of the Committee on Education, but they make up less than half of the Council. Many of the other members have not yet committed to the bill. The media has not covered this legislation well, so many District residents are unaware it is even being debated. The Council needs to know that District families support this legislation.

Supporters of the bill have created a petition you can sign to show your support. You and your older students can sign in support of the bill (probably not your 5 year-olds!). If you support this legislation, please sign the petition and encourage others to do so as well.

ALSO: Your Help Is Needed

I am very grateful for the attention that David Catania’s staff on the Committee on Education has given to homeschooling in the ongoing debates about the DC Promise Act. In the first proposal, as you will remember, all private school students and homeschool students were prohibited from receiving Promise Act funding for college. Catania’s Committee on Education changed that policy in the draft bill before Christmas. That change demonstrated their willingness to listen to criticism and respond to the needs of their constituents.

While I appreciated the Committee’s inclusion of homeschoolers in the Promise Act, I was still concerned that we were not placed on the same footing as other DC students. A homeschool diploma is as legitimate as any other high school diploma, yet the most recent draft of the Promise Act still required homeschool students to pass a GED to prove that they were legitimate high school graduates.

So here is what Catania’s office did this week that really impressed me. You all know that homeschoolers constitute a small percentage of families in the District. We are easy to ignore politically. In spite of that, I have received a number of phone calls from the Committee on Education. They want to work with us and have agreed to propose an amendment to the bill at the next Council meeting to address our concerns. I have seen the language they are proposing and, interpreted properly, it will put homeschoolers on the same footing as other students in the District.

Your Help Is Needed

As I said, homeschoolers constitute a small percentage of District families. Even though David Catania and the Committee on Education are willing to put forward an amendment addressing our concerns, the Council as a whole may find it easier to ignore the proposed amendment and let the bill move forward without changes. We need to let the Council know that homeschoolers care and that they should pay attention to our concerns.

I am hoping that a significant group of homeschoolers will show up at the next DC Council legislative meeting where they will be working on this bill. Please bring your students — they are encouraged to come. We will be there to support the full and equal inclusion of homeschoolers in this bill. Finally, if you are planning to come, please let me know by filling in the form below. The Council would like to have some idea of how many students and families they should expect to attend.

Please RSVP:

Earlier this year Councilman Marion Barry introduced Bill 20-178: The Compulsory Pre-School Attendance Amendment Act of 2013. This bill would require compulsory school attendance beginning at age three. The current compulsory education age in the District is five years old. This is the lowest age in the country, shared by fewer than ten other states. When the bill was initially introduced it appeared that it was dead-on-arrival in the Committee on Education. Today the bill moved forward to a committee hearing. It may be that the legislation will still go nowhere. It doesn’t currently have the support of Councilman Catania, or possibly even the support of Councilman Barry, since he didn’t show up for the hearing until the last few minutes. Even a few of the “educational experts” who were there to testify more broadly on pre-school education issues said that they didn’t think it was a good idea to extend the compulsory age so much lower than the rest of the country.

Nevertheless, this would be a great time to let your Councilmember know that the home is a perfectly appropriate place for all children to learn the basic skills of life that are normally “taught” in pre-school. Government shouldn’t be insisting on a course of study for three year-olds.

If such a bill were to pass, how could the government possibly apply the law to homeschoolers? Would we be required to teach a class in “Playing Well with Others” or “Story-time Listening”? This is preposterous. While many of us start our young children on academic subjects early, no professional educator is going to start requiring all children to begin reading, writing, and math before they turn five. On the other hand, some of us have legitimate philosophical disagreements with the idea of starting intentional education early. In fact, many countries are going the other way and are beginning to ask whether we place too much emphasis on education before age seven and too little emphasis on play.

Let’s do what we can to make sure that this legislation goes no further. Please contact your Councilmember and the At-Large Councilmembers. Urge them to vote against this measure. Council e-mail addresses can be found here:

It is most important that we contact the members of the Committee on Education. These include At-Large members Catania and Grosso, Ward 6 Councilman Wells, Ward 7 Councilwoman Alexander, and Ward 8 Councilman Barry. So especially if you live in Wards 6-8, please e-mail your Councilmember.

Congratulations to all. Thanks to you making your voices heard it appears that the DC Promise Establishment Act will now include homeschoolers and students from District private schools. The bill has undergone a fairly significant change from the original version. The grant award amounts have decreased by 40%, but the bill still provides a significant amount of funding.

I am hesitant to declare a complete success because the current version of the bill does not treat a homeschool diploma as a legitimate high school diploma. It would require homeschoolers to also get a GED or some similar stamp of approval from an external organization. The bill specifically requires a “recognized equivalent” to a high school diploma. This is unnecessary when we are already able to provide our students with an actual high school diploma, not the “recognized equivalent” of one.

Please stay tuned for further information. The Education Committee is having a mark-up meeting on the bill on December 10th at 1:30. You should be able to watch the meeting live here: http://dccouncil.us/granicus

I have had conversations with the Committee staff who are drafting the legislation. I am hoping that the language will change sufficiently to be able to be entirely supportive of the bill. As this process continues I will keep you informed.

At last week’s hearing on the DC Promise Establishment Act numerous speakers challenged Councilman Catania to open the program to all DC students, including those from private schools and homeschoolers. The Councilman responded that including homeschoolers “is something that no other program like this in the country has done thus far.” It appears that he may not have had all of the facts.

Thanks to the research of an industrious DC citizen we now know that two of the largest such programs in the country do, in fact, accept all students, including homeschoolers. The Oklahoma Promise program provides a similar amount of money to low-income students in Oklahoma who meet the requisite criteria. The Oklahoma program accepts applicants from all schools and has specific information in their application for homeschoolers.

Even more interesting though is that the Washington state College Bound program accepts all students, including homeschoolers. This is interesting because Councilman Catania is clearly well-versed in this program. In fact, the first speaker at the hearing was a gentleman from Washington State who had traveled to DC specifically to talk about the Washington state program and the amazing successes they had seen. And the truth is that they had seen amazing success. The high school graduation rate for students who were a part of this program had gone from 59% to 78% in just a few short years. Councilman Catania was so impressed with this program in Washington state that he said, “This is a recipe for success and it is one I am eager to replicate city-wide.”

We wholeheartedly agree that a program showing such a clear benefit is the same sort of program we should establish here in the District. However, let’s not decide that we can just drop thousands of students from being able to access this program and still believe that we are treating the citizens of DC fairly. If we agree that Washington State has an excellent program that has demonstrated clear benefits, then let’s follow their example and extend this program to all of the citizens of the District.

* 12/9/2013 – This information has been superseded by changes in the DC Promise bill. Updated information will be posted soon.

In case you are curious about how much money is at stake in this debate about the DC Promise Establishment Act, here are the amounts of the grants that would be awarded to each student. These figures are based on a child who has been a resident in the District for the 6th-12th grades. Amounts are lower for students who were not in the District in the middle school grades. The income guidelines in the bill are based on percentages of the “federal poverty level.” The figures here come from the poverty guidelines for 2013 posted on the HHS website. All grants are renewable for up to five years.

Income qualifications for a maximum grant of $20,000 per year.

Household size

Maximum Income

2

31,020

3

39,060

4

47,100

5

55,140

6

63,180

Income qualifications for a grant of $15,000 per year.

Household size

Maximum Income

2

62,040

3

78,120

4

94,200

5

110,280

6

126,360

Income qualifications for a grant of $10,000 per year.

Household size

Maximum Income

2

93,060

3

117,180

4

141,300

5

165,420

6

189,540

Those with incomes higher than the third tier but lower than $250,000 would receive $5,000 per year.

Thanks to the Georgetown Hoya we have a better idea of the legislative schedule for the DC Promise bill: “The D.C. Council will officially hear the bill Nov. 13, and Young said he hoped the voting process would be completed by early 2014.”

Please keep spreading the word about this bill that would help many lower and middle income families in the District afford college, unless, of course, you have decided to homeschool your children or send them to private schools. Please contact your Council members and ask them to care for all citizens of the District equally, not just those who attend publicly funded schools.